Who owns the water service line in Irvine, CA
Irvine Ranch Water District owns the water service line and the meter, and its Rules charge for "the installation of and perpetual maintenance" of them. Your building water line starts at "the downstream end of the water meter tailpiece" and everything from there into the house is yours. Note that the same District answers differently for your sewer lateral, where your pipe runs all the way to the property line. This is Irvine Ranch Water District's own statement.
Which part of the pipe is yours
Yours from the meter to your building
Why, and what to doYours from your property line to your building — if certain conditions are met
Why, and what to do
Where the responsibility divides
- Irvine Ranch Water District
- The service line and the meter, owned and maintained. The District's Rules and Regulations provide that "the District shall impose charges for the installation of and perpetual maintenance of all service lines, water and recycled water meters, and appurtenances thereto, all of which facilities are the property of the District", and add for the case where somebody else lays the pipe that "the meter will remain the property of the District". The Rules define the District's water service line as "the District's facility between its distribution system and the water service connection".
- The property owner
- The building water line, which starts at the meter. The Rules define the water service connection as "the point of connection of the customer's building water line with the water service line of the District, which will normally be the downstream end of the water meter tailpiece", and section 4.15.1 makes "the applicant, owner, or customer ... responsible for maintaining all onsite facilities that are under the ownership of parties other than the District".
- What else is worth knowing
- Your two pipes are answered by the same District and they do not divide in the same place, which is unusual enough to be worth checking before you accept a quotation. For water, the District's own pipe stops at the downstream end of the meter tailpiece, so the run from there to your building is yours. For the sewer lateral, the District's rules put the owner's pipe out to the property line and make the District responsible for repairing or reconstructing the lower lateral beyond it - though the same section makes clearing and cleaning either lateral the owner's own expense. So a quotation for "the line to the street" means the whole run on the water side and only the part inside your boundary on the sewer side. The sewer answer is on this District's own page in full.
What this does not tell you
- This describes who is responsible for which part of the pipe. It is not a record of what your own service line is made of.
- This authority's service line inventory - the record of which pipes are lead, and where - has not been matched here yet. Ask the utility for yours.
Your other pipe has a different answer
For the sewer lateral, Irvine Ranch Water District says:
For a house, the property owner's pipe stops at the property line: Irvine Ranch Water District makes owners responsible for "sewer pipes within a building and upper sewer laterals that lead from a building to the edge of its property line", and owns and maintains the sewer pipelines beyond it, with no cleanout condition attached. In a condominium complex or a townhome development the answer is the opposite - the District's Rules put "all laterals upstream of the main line" on the owner "to maintain, repair, or reconstruct", and the District's own share starts at the main line cleanout.
Your sewer lateral is yours to the property line; your water line stops being yours at the meter.
Who pays for the sewer lateral in Irvine, CAHow this compares across California
- Why your two pipes disagree — the places where the sewer and water authorities contradict each other about the run beneath the road.
- Which water systems know what is buried — how much of each California system’s network the utility can actually identify.